Saturday, April 14, 2012

These two black-and-white postcards show off some beautiful scenery in northern Italy.

The same text is printed on the back of each card:

ALBERGO - BAR - RISTORANTE
"AL BOLOGNESE"
S. CROCE DEL LAGO

FOTO EDIZIONI GHEDINA - CORTINA - RIPROD. VIETATA

Albergo Ristorante was located near the shore of the Lago di Santa Croce in the Veneto region of Italy. Its offerings, clearly geared toward tourists, included afternoon teas and light luncheons.

Meanwhile, that's quite a bus in front of the restaurant in the top postcard!

Linjebuss was a Swedish bus company that was founded in 1940 and grew into a major transportation company. In the 1990s, it was absorbed into the sprawling international conglomerate now known as Veolia Transdev.

Friday, April 13, 2012

I have a huge backlog of bloggable1 items that fall into the Tucked Away Inside category, and it's creating problems in the Ephemera Warehouse!2 The books I've come across that contain intriguing slips of old paper are piling up and distracting me from all the other great kinds of ephemera I want to write about.3

So this post is an attempt to chip away at that backlog by offering up a gaggle of previously unpublished Tucked Away Inside goodness in one fell swoop. Enjoy!

Based on information found at a few different geneaology sites5, Charles Fox Urquhart, Jr. -- the son of Charles Fox Urquhart and Independence Nancy Irene Coe -- was born on September 22, 1905, in Sacramento, California, and died on March 15, 1971, in Courtland, Virginia. His wife was Dorothy Harper and they had two children -- Charles Fox Urquhart III6 and Mary Louisa Urquhart. It's possible (and likely?) that the wedding referred to on this card is Mary Louisa's wedding to Lloyd D. Bryant Jr.

High-seas driftnets

BOOK IT WAS INSIDE: "A History of India 2" by Percival Spear (1982 paperback reprint)

The front of this card (not pictured) has a spot for a 33-cent airmail postcard stamp and is pre-addressed to:

I strongly object to the use of high-seas driftnets by the Japanese salmon and squid fishing fleet in the North Pacific Ocean. High-seas driftnets cause the unnecessary deaths of thousands of dolphins and seas birds.

I urge you to act to preserve wildlife and fisheries resources by halting the use of destructive driftnets."

International political pressure (but probably not these postcards) eventually brought an end to high-seas driftnets. According to this online case study:

"In early 1980s Japanese fleets, as well as Taiwan and South Korea, came to use large-scale driftnets in the North Pacific Ocean to catch salmon, tuna, squid, etc. A driftnet typically stretches as wide as 40 miles and traps any species in the wide area. Among victims are marine mammals such as whale, dolphin, porpoise, fur seal; and other sea animals such as sea turtle and even sea birds. Also driftnet fishing by Japanese and other Asian fleet is believed to have contributed to a decrease in the population of such economically valuable fish as tuna, marlin, swordfish, salmon, etc., in the North Pacific Ocean. The U.S., Canada and Russia, all of which have their own fishery industry respectively, were concerned about the rapid destruction of valuable sea resources by those Asian fleets and in fact tried to restrict their fishing in the North Pacific region. As pressures from the U.S., Canada, Russia increased, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which bans driftnet fishing in the high seas effective December 1992. As a result, Japan has halted driftnet fishing on the high-seas ever since."

A sad, unfinished note

BOOK IT WAS INSIDE: "Is It Worth Dying For?"7 by Dr. Robert S. Eliot and Dennis L. Breo (1989 paperback)

Oh, what a sad little letter! Written in careful cursive on a lined sheet of paper, all it states is:

Hi,
Greetings for bright new day.
Had been very sick, getting better.
Hope you are well, often remembered you.

Inside Makarenko's "The Road to Life"

BOOK IT WAS INSIDE: I have a three-volume, English-language hardcover set of Anton Semenovych Makarenko's "The Road to Life (An Epic of Education)," which was published in 1951 by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow.8 Makarenko (1888-1939) was an educator and writer who focused on educational theory. According to Wikipedia:

"In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution [Makarenko] established self-supporting orphanages for street children - including juvenile delinquents - left orphaned by the Russian Civil War. ... Although there was some opposition by the authorities at the early stages of Makarenko's 'experiments', the Soviet establishment eventually came to hail his colonies as a grand success in communist education and rehabilitation."

The three-volume set of "The Road to Life" has some other interesting features. All three books have this attractive bookplate glued to the first page:

And, in paging through the books, I found this interesting margin note -- perhaps written by former owner Daniel L. Mahony:

The note states: "How does ASM know all of the minutiae? Does he, like J.C., have a corps of stenographers scattered about?"

ASM, of course, is Anton Semenovych Makarenko. What J.C. is he referring to? Jesus Christ? Hmmmm.

Footnotes1. "Bloggable" is in the Oxford Dictionary! So are “sexting” and “fnarr fnarr.”
2. #FirstWorldProblems
3. And I have so many things I want to write about, and so precious little time. Eight months ago, I wrote a Fall/Winter preview of upcoming posts. By my count, I've only covered 11 of the 23 topics that I mentioned. And the list of posts I'm eager to research and write has probably quadrupled. Sigh.
4. Author Helen Reimensnyder Martin (1868–1939) was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The full text of "Tillie, a Mennonite Maid" can be found at Project Gutenberg. Meanwhile, this copy of the novel that had the wedding invitation tucked inside once belonged to Mrs. J.C. Andes of Dayton, Virginia, according to the inscription on the first page.
5. Sources include: This FamilyTreeMaker Online page; this RootsWeb page; and this Find A Grave page.
6. Charles Fox Urquhart III's 2008 obituary includes this sentence: "His special friends, Mr. Roberts, Kate, Lizzie and Cassie are waiting to welcome him with wagging tails and sloppy dog kisses."
7. The book's subtitle is: "A Self-Assessment Program to Make Stress Work for You, Not Against You."
8. Volume one, unfortunately, has significant water damage, which keeps this from being a potentially very valuable set.
9. This DiscoverTheNetworks.org "Guide to the Political Left" also has an in-depth biography of Aptheker.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

I'll join in with some excerpts from our souvenir reprint of the April 16, 1912, edition of The Boston Daily Globe. The article pictured at right -- "PROBABLY NOT ENOUGH BOATS" -- focuses on the number of lifeboats on the Titanic. It begins:

"I don't know," he replied. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he added: "The capacity of the lifeboats is between 35 and 40 each. I do not know the number of lifeboats carried by the Titanic. I think it probable, however, that the steamer was equipped with lifeboats enough to accommodate all."

As we know, of course, each lifeboat could have carried as many as 65 people (few did) and Titanic did not have nearly enough lifeboats for the number of passengers on board.

Here's another interesting excerpt, from an article on what was happening in New York City after the sinking was reported:

RICH AND POOR IN TEARS.

By midnight Bowling Green, in front of the White Star Line offices, was the parking place of a large number of automobiles of prominent residents of the city who had driven down town for first-hand information.

Wealth rubbed elbows with poverty and democracy in the crowd which besieged the steamship line officials, and both classes were in deep grief.

There were many instances of fashionably gowned women going into hysterics when the hopeful reports of the afternoon were blasted by the news that only 675 persons had probably been saved.

BROADWAY IN GLOOM.

Vincent Astor, only son of Col John Jacob Astor, accompanied by A.J. Biddle of Philadelphia and Col Astor's secretary, were among the crowd at the offices, and left with tears in their eyes after a 15-minute talk with Vice Pres Franklin.

Relatives of Isador Straus and a number of other prominent passengers has similar talks with Mr Franklin and came away equally dejected.

Here are some other tidbits from throughout the 1912 newspaper:

"NORMAN NOT ABOARD. Well-Known Polo Player Returned on Olympic on Her Last Trip and is at His Home in Hamilton. NEWPORT, April 15 -- According to the passenger list of the steamer Titantic [sic], the name of Maxwell Norman, the well-known Myopia polo player and brother of Reginald, Guy and Bradford Norman of Newport, appears. Maxwell Norman return to this country on board the White Star Liner Olympic on her last run to New York, accompanied by his brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Guy Norman, and he is now at his home in Hamilton, Mass." (Who else had such good luck? Here's a page on Encyclopedia Titanica titled "Canceled Passages Aboard Titanic".)

"PRESIDENT TAFT ANXIOUS. Sought News of His Aide, Maj Archibald W. Butt, USA, Passenger on Titanic. WASHINGTON, April 15 -- President Taft was greatly anxious tonight for news of his aide, Maj Archibald W. Butt, one of the four Washington persons on the Titanic." (Butt went down with the ship.)

"ICEBERGS NUMEROUS. Capt Filler of the Bulgaria Saw Two Near the Locality Where the Titanic Went Down. The disaster to the Titanic has caused intense excitement among the officers of the foreign steamers now in port. Many of the liners passed bergs on their way across the ocean, and all of them declared that the ice was much farther south this year than is usual at this season."

"10,000 FEET UNDER WATER. Mail Matter on Titanic Probably Lost With Ship When She Went to Bottom. The mail for Boston on board the Titanic is supposed to have gone down with the steamship never to be recovered, owing to the 10,000 feet depth of the ocean where the vessel sank."

Finally, here's an artist's rendering of what the Titanic sinking was thought to have looked like, by Globe illustrator Worden Wood:

Monday, April 9, 2012

This Bingo card is dated 1941 and was produced by the E.S. Lowe Company in New York. Edwin S. Lowe (1911-1986) was the founder of that company, and Beano, Bingo and a Catholic church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, played big parts in the success of his venture, which later brought the game Yahtzee to the masses. For all of that history, check out Duncan Pohl's terrific article titled "The E.S. Lowe Toy Company, Timing, and Chess."

The Convention Hall, part of the Philadelphia Convention Hall and Civic Center, was built in 1931 and torn down in 2005, after more than a decade without a regular tenant. In an interesting twist of fate, the Globe Ticket Company Building, which is where this ticket was printed, is now the location of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which opened in 1993.

Footnotes1. This Omniglot page contains translations of "Happy Easter" in many languages.
2. According to Ancestry.com, there was a Florence A. Bastuscheck who was born in Pennsylvania around 1885 and was living in Mifflin Township in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, when the 1930 Census, was taken.

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About the Author

I'm Chris Otto, a Pennsylvania resident and journalist whose hobbies and interests include old books, ephemera, history, folklore, alpacas, photography and much more. Never stop reading, learning and asking questions! I consider this blog to be a spiritual descendant of Microsoft Encarta and a companion to Wikipedia. Every piece of paper tells a story.
Reach me at chrisottopa (at) gmail.com.

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